The next stage in the arsenic project is for each group to put together a research proposal. This is something that scientists do all the time, as almost every scientist, whether they are working in a college or university, a government laboratory or even an industrial organization, has to apply in writing for resources to conduct the research. For academic researchers, the resources needed are the money to buy equipment, and supplies, hire the appropriate personnel, and cover any travel (to field sites and conferences), because the institution concerned only supplies the basic laboratory (and maybe some basic equipment) and the salary for the faculty project leader (who is known as the principal investigator--abbreviated to PI). Most faculty PI spend a lot of their time writing proposals that they submit to various funding agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Department of Energy, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Geological Survey, the US Department of Agriculture, and so on, and so on.
The basic components of a proposal are (a) a title of the proposed study, (b) an abstract (i.e. a brief description of the major goals and what is going to be done if the funding requested is granted, (c) a summary of the relevant previous work that has been published in the peer reviewed literature (with citations), (d) an explanation of what is new and important about the outcomes of the proposed work, (e) a detailed description of preliminary experiments that have been carried out, and a description of what experiments will be conducted, together with a discussion of how to deal with any difficulties that might arise, (f) a budget for the resources needed, together with a justification of the proposed expenditure, (g) plans for dissemination of the major findings, (h) a description of the results of any previous projects supported by the funding agency, and (i) some information about the PI (such as the details of some relevant publications).
For the purposes of the arsenic project, a simplified proposal is needed. It should contain the following components: (a) a title of the proposed study, (b) an abstract (i.e. a brief description of the major goals and what is going to be done), (c) a summary of the relevant previous work that has been published in the peer reviewed literature (with citations in proper journal format), (d) an explanation of what is new and important about the outcomes of the proposed work, and (e) descriptions of the preliminary experiments and descriptions of the experiments that will be carried out.
It is a good idea to formulate your proposed work around the testing of some hypothesis or hypotheses. For example, you might write, “Experiments will be conducted to test the hypothesis that the soil in apple orchards more than 50 years old is heavily contaminated with lead arsenate.” For the preliminary experiments, the goal is that each group will have made some measurements of the arsenic content of some relevant materials. It is OK to include graphs and tables if this is a good way to present your results. Most likely the preliminary experiments will be inconclusive. This is normal and should not be a cause of concern. Just indicate that you plan to clarify any ambiguities or uncertainties or decrease the number of possible interpretations of the results. It is quite acceptable to indicate that you will repeat experiments that have already been done (either by you or by someone else) as part of your proposal. This acts as a check on the previous work (especially if the results were unexpected in any way) and is a way of introducing new researchers to the field.
You should include citations to relevant sources. Put numbers in the text at the appropriate place and collect the references at the end. The references should be in full ACS format, i.e. include the author’s surnames and initials, the title of the paper, the name of the journal, year, volume and page numbers. There is no need to provide links to journal articles, but if you can create a hyperlink to a website reference that would be helpful. Remember that names of chemicals don’t take initial capital letters (unless they start a sentence or are tradenames). Break the proposal into several sections and give each one a subheading.
The target length is about 750 words, and the document is due as a Word file attached to an e-mail message by midnight on November 12th.